Up in the Air
starring George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick and Justin Bateman
screenplay by Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner
directed by Jason Reitman
Rating: ♦♦♦◊◊
Based on the novel by Walter Kirn, Up in the Air (the Japanese title “Mileage, My Life” is a lame attempt at an English pun) is the story of Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), an Omaha, Nebraska-based businessman whose business is firing people. Companies all over America hire him to do their “employee reductions” in their stead, so national economic catastrophe is his economic bonanza. It’s a strange kind of job and a sad commentary on these times we are living in, but there are stranger things still in the world. As a sideline he is a motivational speaker. Now that’s pretty strange, too.
The title “Up in the Air” is a double entendre. On the surface it refers to Ryan’s quest for the maximum number of air mileage points and all the shallow, or fake‘status’ that his various membership and preferred customer cards give him. His job keeps him flying all over America for ten months of the year, so he collects those mileage points pretty fast. But it also refers to his work as a professional terminator. His job is to separate people from their jobs as quickly and antiseptically as possible, leaving them in limbo, or up in the air.
Ryan is a middle aged man, but his lifestyle is itinerant and shallow. He values cosmetic courtesy and hospitality. He has no wife, girlfriend or children. He owns no home but rents small, cheap digs for the two months out of the year he works in the Omaha home office. And he has convinced himself not only that he likes it that way, but that way is best. If you stop moving, you die. Mobility is life. Settled people are less alive. That’s what he says in his motivational speeches.
The alternate view is that Ryan’s life is lonely and isolated and ... well ... pretty meaningless. And then Ryan falls in love. Now, romantic comedy is my favorite kind of movie, but I deduct points from Up in the Air because it remains a sad story. Ryan doesn’t get the woman he falls for - Alex, a nymphomaniac travel addict cut from the same cloth. Or, so we think, because it turns out that Alex is a worse poser than Ryan.
George Clooney is a smooth guy. If I was a woman I would swoon over him. But in this film it is Vera Farmiga as Alex who gives the best performance, I think
By comparison, Anna Kendrick’s 23-year-old Natalie, Ryan’s protégé, is just annoying - sort of like Alexis Bledel in Post Grad. She sounds like she should be popping bubble gum, not firing older, experienced workers.
I really like Jason Bateman (Ryan’s boss, Craig Gregory). I watched Bateman as a 1980s child actor on sitcom television and I think he has grown into a fine character actor.
And finally, the music in this film was really good.